Hachette India

Hachette India

Hachette India is the Indian arm of the world's largest general books publisher, Hachette. It began its local publishing programme in May 2009 with Amit Varma's My Friend Sancho, the highest selling fiction debut of the year. This was followed by such books as Manjit Kumar's Quantum (shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009) and Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters. The Children's books division got off to a great start as well with the best-selling The Mahatma and the Monkeys.

Hachette UK is in turn a part of Hachette Livre France, the leading publisher in France by a mile. The Hachette group is also the world's number 1 magazine publisher as Hachette Filippachi, (Paris Match, Elle magazine, etc.). The Hachette group further is owned by the Lagardre group, also the owners of Airbus.

What is unique about the Hachette group is its sense of federalism. So, despite common group objectives or PR initiatives, they are quite clear that they want to preserve the individual flavour and creative drive of each company. Often group companies may even bid against each other for the same book.